Texas School Districts File Third Lawsuit Against State Over School Funding

A third group of Texas schools filed suit against the state Tuesday over education funding, alleging that the system of financing public education is inadequate and unfair to low-income and English-learning students. One more lawsuit against the state is expected from another portion of Texas' more than 1,100 school districts.

The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund filed the suit on behalf of four Texas school districts and three parents, alleging that the current state system of using property taxes for more than half of public school funding is unfair. The method creates a revenue and funding gap between schools zoned to higher-income neighborhoods and those in lower-income communities -- a gap as large as $1,000 per student, MALDEF Southwest Regional Counsel David Hinojosa said at a news conference, KSAT reports.

The complaint also seeks a declaration of necessity for the so-called Robin Hood state system that redistributes property tax revenue more equitably across districts if the state is to continue relying heavily on property taxes to fund education. There are also other options for the state to more equitably fund school districts, Hinojosa says.

Tuesday's suit follows a complaint filed last week by a coalition of about 120 wealthy Texas school districts, alleging that the current school funding system is unconstitutional because it doesn't adequately finance schools and imposes an illegal statewide property tax. The Texas School Coalition, made up of districts that gave up tax money under the Robin Hood plan, is handling the lawsuit.

"The Texas school finance system is in crisis again," Mark Trachtenberg, one of the attorneys representing the districts, told the Austin American-Statesman. "The current system does not meet the constitutional definition of adequacy and denies local districts the ability to address that adequacy."

The inadequacy that the plaintiffs allege is seen in the state's failure to pay for $4 billion in enrollment growth as the Texas K-12 student population expands at an estimated 80,000 annually, AP reports, leading to larger class sizes and educator layoffs. Lawmakers also slashed about $1.4 billion last year that went to grant initiatives like dropout prevention programs and after-school tutoring.

"There is not one school district that is sufficiently funded," Rappaport writes in the report. "This is an obvious hallmark of an irrational system."

Still, the debate over funding, class sizes and the perhaps consequent student achievement remains complex. A study from the 1980s showed that smaller class sizes were more effective in early years, but less so in later grades.

"Where you're dramatically reducing class size, in low-advantage communities in lower grades when kids are learning things like how to read, that's been beneficial," Duncan told The Huffington Post in October. "We've done it elsewhere, spent billions of dollars on class size without any demonstrable benefit. We need to talk about class size, and quality."